There are some books one has to have. The tree of codes by Jonathan Safran Foer is one of those for me. Cover graphics and title got my attention immediately. There can be some sort of magic in books, especially in art and artists books, they can spark off ideas or close missing connections. Visual [...]

Buy this sketch as postcard on Zazzle Coarse woody debris is a fascinating world for itself. There is a special program applied in the managed public forest around my home to leave more woody debris in the forests. The intention is to improve the living conditions for natural enemies of forest pests. As a result [...]

-buy this sketch as postcard on Zazzle- On this rainy day I headed straigth to a hut in the woods. There was this typical laundry kind of smell in the air,temperatures well over 10°C and high moisture. The woodpeckers where very busy, but also other birds. I could identify a new bird, a warbler To [...]

It was already raining a bit when I left home. First birds could be heard, especially the woodpeckers were very busy, spring is coming soon. I sat down in a dark, young douglas fir and spruce tree forest. Green algae covered some of the trunks and contrasted with the dark wet bark. The wind was [...]

OLIVE TREE NEAR FOURFOURAS, roller ball pen, Sketchbook Crete, 2009 courtesy Albrecht Rissler. Today I want to point out to a recent addition to the blogroll of this blog “drawing landscape” by Albrecht Rissler. For all those who are interested in drawing landscapes and trees this new weblog will be a resource of inspiration. The [...]

Coming back to the place I had begun my last forest diary study in drizzling rain I found that an important part of my subject had been harvested. Somehow I regret that not much of the first steps was left in the final stage of this study, even though a bit of sun was a [...]

We had lots of snow shortly before Christmas. It was coming down like rain. Two times snow shoveling on the 24th of December and about 40 cm of snow in the woods. I did a short excursion with the camera, wading through heaps of snow. On Sunday the sun came out in the morning for [...]

As expected the snow had melted away since my last visit. Temperatures well above zero and some rain removed the white cover of last week almost entirely. While on my way through the woods on this overcast day I noticed the wonderful greens of moist moss on the trunks of beech and oak trees which [...]

There has been more snow during this week. Now there is a 15-20 cm thick white cover, but today temperatures went up and rain is the forecast for tonight. Tracks of wild boars and roe deers are everywhere. I could see the bites of the roe deers on the few blackberry leaves left. Once again [...]

I picked up the big gouache sketchbook today to continue with the forest diary I had not touched since March. There was this total November stillness in the woods that I like so much. Even the jays made no sound and flew away without scolding while walked through the rustling leaves. I love the first [...]